Freak Winds - Red Line Productions

Overview

Written and directed by Sydney theatre veteran Marshall Napier, Freak Winds is like a ghost train — if ghost trains were good. There’s a couple of jump scares, equal measures of weirdness and mounting dread, none of which is alleviated by the laughter in the audience. Above all, it keeps you guessing, looking like it could jump in about six different directions until the closing seconds.

Henry Crumb (Ben O’Toole) is an insurance salesman. When his car is crushed by a tree, a simple sales pitch to an old man named Ernest (Marshall Napier) becomes a prolonged visit. Between bouts of spontaneous vomiting, knife-sharpening and a Chocolate Wheaten or two, Henry realises that he has underestimated Ernest and begins to suspect that he himself may be far higher on Ernest’s list of priorities than insurance is.

Of late, the stranger-with-an-agenda-gets-more-than-he-bargained-for plot seems to be more prevalent in cinema than theatre, and so it is fascinating to see themes and tropes from the horror and thriller genres explored without a screen mediating the experience. Originally performed in this very space a decade ago, Freak Winds has gone on to have several international productions.

Napier has run the gauntlet of director, actor and writer with great skill. In Ernest, he has written an enigma, a, no-nonsense gentleman who operates with Napier’s trademark gruffness but who also harbours facets of Hannibal Lecter in his penchant for manners and prickly questions. A plodder in many respects, Ernest is prone to very quick changes of temper and every one of his scenes is a tense affair as his visitor flounders, unable to determine whether to play the role of businessman or prisoner.

The problem is that when Ernest shuffles offstage, this tension cools and stalls the momentum of the play. O’Toole’s Henry is brash and manic and his meltdown is simultaneously comedic and stressful. In terms of unravelling the play’s mystery, though, he knows no more than those observing him. Myra (Anna Bamford), a wheelchair-bound companion of Ernest’s definitely has answers, but we sense that she will not be the one to give them up; her enjoyment of Henry’s despair is too pronounced. There is no doubt that the equation becomes infinitely stranger every time Ernest absents himself, but the story pays for this in the time it takes to get going again once he reappears.

Despite these lulls, Freak Winds is still very entertaining. The creeping mould on the back wall of Ernest’s otherwise immaculate living room is not the only blight in this house — there is serious evil at work here. Ignore the Old Fitz’s dinner deal this time around; this is not one to do on a full stomach.